For most of the details of Stalag 18A, I am indebted to three ex-inmates: Eric Fearnside,
Ken Willmott and Ken O'Kennedy. Eric was a driver in the Royal Engineers who got away from Greece at the small port
of Navplion, but was later captured in Crete.

Eric's book contains a lot of detail of the day-to-day life in the camp, in particular the concerts and other entertainments.

Sadly, Eric died in 1998.

Ken Willmott was in the Fourth Hussars and was captured at Kalamata. He was a musician and,
like Eric, was heavily involved with camp entertainment.

Ken O'Kennedy was a Signalman. He was captured in Crete, spent 2 years in Work
Camp 1107/L before returning to Stalag 18A. He was heavily involved with the
Theatre.

Whether a soldier was captured in Greece or Crete, the next few weeks had a grim
similarity. On foot, by road, rail or sea, he would eventually be taken to a temporary camp in Salonika.
From there, he would be packed into a railway wagon designed for carrying cattle, with fifty other
prisoners of war. There followed days of hunger, thirst and lack of sleep as the train made
its slow way up through Yugoslavia to southern Austria and the final
destination of Stalag 18A at Wolfsberg. (For some, the journey ended at Stalag
18D in Marburg. When this camp closed, most POWs were transferred to Stalag
18A.)

(For a detailed account of the journey from the POW camp at Corinth in Greece
to Stalag
18A, click on The Road to Wolfsberg.)

A prisoner did not usually stay long in Stalag 18A, as it was a clearing camp for scores of working camps
throughout Austria. Within a few days he would be assigned to a Work Party (Arbeitskommando), normally of 15 to 20 men,
and sent on. The 'lucky' ones would be assigned to farm work, where there was a least a chance of
adequate food. The less fortunate might be sent to an iron mine, a quarry or a timber mill, where
the hours were long and the work hard.

Red Cross Report

At intervals, Delegates from the Red Cross would visit Stalag 18A to ensure that the prisoners were being treated
according to the Geneva Convention. Click here for an extract from the report compiled after a visit in August,
1944.

Sections

So what
made Stalag different from a working camp?
Well, ARBEIT, of course. But
Senior NCO’s and WO’s didn’t have to work according to the Geneva
Convention. Officers
too; their camps were much more security-minded than those for the ranks. It was
most probably a German belief that officers were much more intelligent and
therefore more able to plan sophisticated disguises, tunnels etc.

In
Wolfsberg there were quite a lot of people hanging around. Some of them didn’t
exist; their names had been removed from an index by (allegedly) the Phantom
(believed to be a certain Joe Gretton), foolishly entrusted with this job
The so-called Inner Circle was responsible for giving the Germans a
sufficient supply for the working camps, but they were also capable of ensuring
that valuable labour was kept in Stalag; for example for the theatre –
musicians, actors of all kinds, electricians, art designers, tailors,
carpenters, writers and for the care of the sick – medical orderlies,
doctor’s assistants.

What to
do to pass the time? Sport? Well,
soccer was taken very seriously from a regional point of view.
Interminable running round the area known as the sport field.
But the greatest game of all was Australian in origin – no, not cricket
or rugby. There was always a ring
of people somewhere uttering strange cabalistic noises, such as- ‘ten he heads
‘em, get set on the side, come in spinner!’
TWO-UP, they called it. So what do you gamble with? On the working camps,
men were paid “Lager Geld” of RM18.20 per month, blissfully ignorant that
after the war they would be redeemed at face value.

And
talking about face value…trading laws were necessary. Economists declare that
money must adhere to at least three rules – acceptability, divisibility and
limited in quantity. Lager Geld was
OK for some, but certainly not to the French, etc. Cigarettes filled the bill.
So by international agreement the day’s rates were pinned up on a barrack wall
for all to see.

To
facilitate communication a language was devised – Lager Deutsch – not only
for trading. e.g. "Du kommen round miney barrack, ik gibben du shockolade – du
habben Cigaretten??"
It was even understood by some Germans.
An example: from time to time German security officers wandered round the
camp. One of these was a
Sonderfuehrer with the unfortunate last name of LAUSE.
Allegedly he was in civilian life a university professor who spoke
faultless English.

Scene
– an interview with a middle-aged Londoner who had served in WW1, Darky Marsh
by name.

Marsh:
“Ere comes Lousy – what the f--- does 'e want?

Lause:
“Why cannot we be civil to each other, Mr. Marsh? I see from your jacket that
you have medals from the Great War. As you see from my uniform, I too have the
medals which show that I was there too.

Marsh
(unwilling to share the moment and the language, after a pause for
consideration)

“Miney medals real medals. Du
medals Ersatz medals.

Lause :
(Departs with reluctant sigh.)

Religion?
There were of course no church parades, no line-up in column of threes
followed by “Fall out the other denominations”.
There were however three interesting Ministers: Father Juneau, an S.J. Roman Catholic, Rev. Hobling a very nice man
reminiscent of a village curate, who was killed in the December 1944 bombing,
and “Padre”
John Ledgerwood of the YMCA, often to be seen in the theatre and also in the Two-up
ring. All of them conducted services of a sort in the theatre with a modest following.

So was
18A like a Butlin’s Holiday Camp? Well, compared with the working camps and
their long working hours laying roads, breaking stones with 3-kilo hammers,
perhaps.

For some
however it was the boredom, the waiting for Red Cross Parcels and news from home
that affected their minds. But most
of us got back, to be told “War’s not over yet. Get
retrained for Far East!!!”

But we
weren’t – we weren’t needed any more.

(Ken O'Kennedy)

POW-WOW

The British & Commonwealth POWs in Stalag 18A printed a newsletter,
POW WOW. This is the first edition, printed in December 1941. It was
brought home by L/Bdr Tom Watson, Northumberland Hussars.

Stalag 18A Photographs

I have included this set of pictures to give some idea of day-to-day life in
Stalag 18A and the satellite Work Camps (and also to display some more of the
photos that you kind people have sent).

I've also included the group and individual photos which were taken at Stalag
18A. These can also be found in the Photo Galleries, accessed from the Roll
Call page.

Claude Cooper

SSM Cooper, RAC, was Camp Leader at Stalag 18A. He can be seen in most of the
large group photos shown above. The following photos were sent by Vel
Edwards-Hier, his daughter. The German officer in the third photo is probably
Oberstleutnant von Reckow.

Stuart Fraser of Australia has sent the following set of photographs, brought
back by his father, CQMS George McKenzie Fraser, 2/7 Inf. Bn. They appear to
show a Boxing and Wrestling Tournament with contestants from the British and
French camps. The event probably took place in April 1943 (although the
dedication on one photo is dated 2.10.43).

Stan Huitson

J. Vernon

Unknown

Nipper Smith

Jim Miller

Albert Drew

John Moore

Thomas Cameron

Stanley Young

'Bomber'

Percy Shaw

Henri le Grand

Tournament 1

Tournament 2

Tournament 3

The following three photographs are also courtesy of Stuart
Fraser.

Football

Basketball

Athletics

Other Sports pictures from Stalag 18A

Robert Dickson group

Herbert Hook group

NZ Rugby Team

Edgar Miller group

Les Hudson group 1

Les Hudson group 2

The Shadow Men

A small group of prisoners were in the camp awaiting court martial by the German authorities for
serious 'crimes' such as escape, theft, sabotage and striking a guard. If found guilty, they
could be sent to
a Straflager or punishment camp. (That would be Straflager Gadunsk in
Poland, which had a terrible reputation.) These were the 'Shadow Men', also
said to be 'in smoke'. Strangely, they were allowed to mix freely with the other
POW's. Whenever their names were called, however, they had disappeared. One POW walked around quite openly under the name of 'Stanley
Hadow', or 'S.Hadow'. Harry Hockey even took part
in one of the shows (as a 'Belle'!) while he was a Shadow man.

Often the German guards would know that a particular Shadow man was in the
camp and warn him if the Gestapo were about to conduct a search with dogs. Next
to the Delousing Hut was a small hut known as the 'LZ' that housed ill and
disabled POWs. Underneath this hut was an escape tunnel where the Shadow men
could hide until the search was over.

A great worry for any POW was not knowing how the war was progressing. This was solved in Stalag 18A
by 'acquiring' a small radio. The discovery of this radio by the guards would have led to serious
punishments. It was hidden in the wall of the boiler room under the watchful eye of 'The Two Ernies',
Ernie Mack and Ernie Carroll. Eric Fearnside was given the job of listening to the BBC broadcasts
and then touring the huts to pass on the information with the aid of maps. This became known as 'Searchlight'.
Because of his predictions as to the future progress of the war, he became known as 'General Fearnside'.

At the
working camps news was scarce; perhaps one or two larger camps may have cobbled
together a radio, but mostly all that was heard was from local work gaffers who
insisted – until about summer 1944 – that they were clearly winning the war.

But in
Stalag, there was:

THE NEWS
- At first a squad wandered round each barrack with a brief report
summarized from the hidden radio. Later
however, the presentation was given in the theatre rivalling today’s BBC’s
Peter Snow explaining election trends. The peripatetic version was maintained by
a Kiwi sergeant, Hec Myers whose version was from the same source, though
sometimes we wondered; viz: “Last
night many fires were started in Hamburg after the RAF dropped insanitary
bombs.”

Then of
course there were rumours and s***-house rumours, of varying content

‘Pakete
morgen’ (Red Cross parcels tomorrow)-
sometimes true

‘Hauptmann
Schaefer (the Security boss) has asked the SS to take over the camp.’
Never noticed it.

‘The
Americans are only ten miles away’-
the Long March contradicted that one.

Give a
medal to the lads who built the radio -
they kept the morale up!

There
were also the German loudspeakers that from time to time would give their
versions of air battles in Britain: